Yuletide Immortal excerpt

We are now only four days away–December second– from the debut of the newest novella from Adam the immortal, Yuletide Immortal! I’m marking the occasion with a Thunderclap social media blast that will go out on Noon of the release day, and I can always use more help with that. Specifically, if you follow this link, you can help me by agreeing to let Thunderclap send the following message via the social medium you’ve chosen:

You don’t have to do anything else and Thunderclap won’t use your media feed for any other reason.

Excerpt

Also, because I’m in a good mood, here’s a tiny taste of Yuletide Immortal for you.

* * *

The first time I met Santa was in a bar.

I appreciate that this is a true statement about a lot of the people I’ve met in my life, especially the most recent portion, by which I mean the last hundred years or so. I spent most of the twentieth century in North America, in bars, clubs, restaurants, and so on. Any place that served alcohol. I also appreciate that this was not always a stupendous plan given for a solid decade there weren’t any places to legally purchase and imbibe alcohol in the United States, but at the same time Prohibition was going on Europe was a crap place to be thanks to the fallout from the War to End All Wars and plus, I was too lazy to get up and go somewhere else.

Still, by 1955 you’d think I would have figured out there were easier places to get drunk. Aside from prohibition, by mid-century I had also survived a nightclub fire and a mob hit in two different bars a decade apart, which is the sort of track record that can make a guy consider—if not drinking in a less violent country—abstinence or drinking alone.

The problem is I’ve been alive for a really long time—going on sixty-thousand years—and a whole lot of that has involved solo drinking. Generally if in a culture where I’m welcome, regardless of how dangerous that culture can turn out to be occasionally, I’d rather share a pint with some people than be alone with a bottle.

Which, again, is how I met Santa.

I was occupying a barstool in the Village in lower Manhattan at the time. It was December, of course—one does not meet Santa in August—and as I said the year was 1955.

I don’t like New York City all that much. I’m not sure why. I mean, there are times when it’s just the right kind of controlled hedonism, but there’s also a certain tribal rudeness to the inhabitants that I could never appreciate from the perspective of a fellow tribe-member. I think it’s probably also a lovely place to be if one has a lot of money, but for the century in question when I was there it was either as a common laborer or a modestly well-off tourist. I never got to enjoy it as a fabulously wealthy gadabout. Maybe if I had I’d have appreciated it more.

Anyway. Santa. He showed up as I was on my third or fourth pint of really crummy tap beer and engaged with a few of the locals on the subject of the new bridge opening up that month, and how this would or would not signal the end of civilization as we knew it.

I’m not really kidding. There were four other patrons in on the conversation plus the bartender, and they collectively seemed to think the Tappan Zee Bridge would be bringing all manner of aliens into the city.

This is a common affliction, historically, in which change is viewed as a negative regardless of what kind of change it is. I remember having similar arguments over pre-sliced bread, cars, and Roman aqueducts. Although in fairness I agreed with the argument against cars. I still think they were a bad idea.